Billy Gets Political

 

I really wanted to try to find something organically for this assignment, and I figured it wouldn’t be that hard. But it turns out my online life is in an even bigger echo chamber than I thought. I went for a whole week, keeping an eye out for arguments in which multiple sides were represented in a meaningful way, but all I could find were posts of stories and then some number of comments either agreeing or disagreeing with the topic. 

I came really close to ignoring everything meaningful and going with “Does Eli Manning deserve to be in the NFL Hall of Fame?” And while clearly he does not (sorry if anyone in this class is a Giants fan) the arguments were still basically “yes he does, you idiot” and “no he doesn’t, you idiot” which I decided was not terribly productive. 

Then one of my favorite musicians - Grammy Award winning bluegrass singer and guitarist Billy Strings - changed the lyrics to one of his songs to include current events, and an anti-ICE message.

 

The very first message underneath the video let me know that the comments were generally going to be supportive of the new lyrics, and I figured I was going to have to go find some people complaining about Bad Bunny at the Super Bowl. 

 

 

 

But then someone posted an interesting sentiment.

If you read that whole comment then you probably asked what the big deal was.

But if you were scrolling too fast, like I was, and like others in the thread were - then you only read the first sentence fragment and figured this was someone being critical of Billy for being political. 

Here’s some sarcasm about the political history of this type of music. 

Later on, the “put it in a song” commenter edited his post.

And then I re-read it, slowly, and realized that he wasn’t being critical, he was saying that artists should do exactly what Billy did. Other people did too.

There are a few lessons from this thread that I think are important. 

When making an argument on a platform like Reddit where there’s a lot being said and people are scrolling quickly, it’s important to remember that many people will read your sentiment VERY quickly. The first line of a Reddit post can be a lot like the subject line of an email. You need to get your main point across quickly and effectively so that people will read the whole thing and not misinterpret it. 

The second lesson is the inverse of the first - readers, don’t scroll so fast!! Slow down, and read the whole thing before reacting. Just because a comment seems at first like it’s going to be one you disagree with doesn’t mean you’re reading it correctly, and it definitely doesn’t mean there won’t be nuance in the argument and room for agreement. 

Third, I liked how the very first comment in the thread set ground rules. If you’re starting a conversation where you know there might be impassioned opinions, it’s good to make it clear what that conversation does and doesn’t have room for. The conversation starter said this was a conversation on this specific change to this specific song by this specific artist, and it was not a place to hold a broader conversation about politics, AND clarified that anyone with a pro-ICE sentiment was not welcome. If those people want to argue about that issue, they can go somewhere else. 

Fourth, share information that others might not know that could sway them to your side, like the commenter who added a link to the resource about the rise of fascism.  

Fifth, remember your shared humanity. This applies in any argument - you always have many more commonalities with the person making the counter-argument than you have differences. In this case, all the commenters had even more in common, all being fans of this particular style of music and this particular artist. 

Finally, it’s important to remember that Eli Manning was a mediocre quarterback at best who happened to be on two teams that put together all-time-great postseason runs, and while he played fine during those seasons, he did not carry those teams himself, nor should he get primary credit for their success, and no I’m not just saying that because I’m originally from New England.